Science City sets up crack team to source innovators

Jul 2 2009 by Andrew Mernin, The Journal

A CRACK team of innovation specialists will be employed to source new science-driven businesses in the region.

Newcastle Science City – the initiative set up to transform the city into an epicentre for science and technology enterprise – is to recruit 10 ‘innovators’ with entrepreneurial track-records to get its ‘‘innovation machine’’ into motion.

By the end of the year NSC hopes to have built a team of people who will seek to unearth unmet needs which can be filled by inventions with the potential to be turned into North East businesses.

The £6m business innovation machine project has been backed by £3m in European funding and £600,000 from regional development agency One North East.

Meanwhile, NSC’s chief executive Peter Arnold said the organisation has received a strong response to its Scientia book – a publication sent out to hundreds of companies across the globe to show why they should invest in Newcastle.

The brochure, put together in a bid to help transform Tyneside’s economy, shows off the pioneering work being undertaken in the region’s laboratories in a number of fields, such as stem cell research and treatments for age-related problems.